A Kinder Killing
by Larry Huss
Summary: They say that revenge is a dish best served cold. Komarr begins to feast on Aral Vorkosigan's finest dish.
1. Chapter 1

I do not own, or receive any profit, from any of the Vorkosigan properties.

A Kinder Killing

Chapter 1

By Larry Huss

Cordelia Naismith tried to avoid gritting her teeth. It would do no good, and her dentist wouldn't like it when she got back to Beta. Besides, letting these barbarians get under her skin was probably inevitable. Showing them that their crude manners and tricks worked was under her control, however. And in any case, she'd won (at least this far); she was going to get her conference with the local head barbarian, Aral Vorkosigan himself. Soon, anyway. Currently she was sitting in an odd-smelling anteroom in the _Vashnoi Kremlin_, still under construction. She could feel the slightest vibrations from time to time, as new major components were mated to the existing structure on the far side of fortress. The view through the window (an honest to God window… only a few centimeters between her and vacuum) didn't look out on the construction site. Barrayaran paranoia or chance? She wouldn't have bet a Betan centidollar either way.

It was only a few minutes more, not nearly enough time to be exactly rude, that the tall officer came in to escort her to her objective. He was wearing his green undress uniform, black boots, and on his collar were the blue tabs of a captain. If circumstances had been different Cordelia would have thought him handsome: dark hair in a less than military cut, light olive skin, and a beautiful smile on a friendly face. She was careful not to let her approval show; he probably knew what effect his looks had on women all too well. She noted his name tag, Vorpatril, and wondered where he fitted in the unclear web of Vorish nepotism that staffed their fledgling empire. At least he wasn't all grim and military, despite his uniform. They talked easily on the topics spacefarers easily did when going through a new installation: size, and staffing (in a military structure necessarily far more than a civilian one), and what short-cuts the contractors had tried to get away with.

From where she was picked up it was a short trip through a corridor, a twenty second elevator ride toward the core of the fortress, and through another short corridor (with a ship-worthy airlock) into another corridor, this one wide, carpeted and traversed by groups of three or four men (mostly young) chatting with each other as they strolled by. They were quick enough to get out of Vorpatril's way, but didn't seem to be doing any of the bracing and saluting she'd expected. Cordelia looked at her escort, and asked, "Aren't these… men being a bit informal?"

Vorpatril nodded, "cousin Aral has declared this section as off-duty-land during construction; non-military manners are allowed. Though military justice is still in effect in other ways."

'Cousin Aral,' she thought. Even the complicated interbreeding of the Vor didn't go so far as to allow any of them to make that sort of claim without there being a fairly close relationship in effect. So now she could place her handsome escort in the web of nepotism connections. How you could run a space-vessel, much less a planet with a system like that? She had no idea how they got away with it.

All men, no women on the station. That was something the briefing had gotten right, at least. If some of the other cultural notes had been accurate… there would be a good deal of unresolved sexual tension also. She wasn't enough of an anthropologist to ask the obvious questions, and in any case they had arrived at their destination. It was the first place on this level that had a guard on it. In fact, he was the first person she seen on this level with a weapon on him. A Nerve Disrupter in a holster on the left, a Stunner in a holster on the right, and an interesting assortment of knives (both powered and natural) showing on the man's belt, and sticking up discreetly from the top of his boot.

"Captain Vorpatril escorting Captain Naismith in to see Admiral Vorkosigan, Sergeant," Vorpatril said. Evidently there were limits on how far off-duty things were allowed to be on approaching the commander of the occupied zone. The gaunt and ugly guard nodded, checked the name tag on Cordelia's khaki uniform tunic, and went back to scanning up and down the corridor for some hypothetical assassin. The door behind him opened without any sensor or switch being activated that she could see, and they were let into a vestibule with a manned check-in area with storage lockers, and a series of doors leading off into different directions. She wondered if all this travel time was going to be counted against her promised half-hour meeting with Vorkosigan. Vorpatril took her to the one furthest away from the entrance, and then led her into an odd fantasy.

Wood, natural and undoubted wood everywhere. All the paneling of a room at least 15 meters long, six wide and at least four high was done in various types and shades of wood. The tables, chair frames, shelving, and free-standing cabinets were all made of it. There was even an actual fireplace burning away what was no doubt her daily salary's worth of real, organically grown wood. Her nose automatically sniffed in the aroma of the fire. It wasn't just something burnt though. It smelled…

"Cherry," the other occupant of the room said. "Cherry wood. It's all to impress you, of course. Open flames in a space station; how can you not feel some respect for people willing to do that? Or at least be properly terrified at anyone who'd import something that many light years just to destroy it for nostalgia's sake, and don't mind the inherent environmental risks. On second thought… maybe 'appalled' is a better word than 'respect'? Please, take a seat." He gestured to a pair of fabric covered chairs on either side of a small table, cups and teapot already present, some meter and a half from the fire.

She nodded pleasantly, a vague and embarrassed smile on her face, and moved in the indicated direction, taking stock of the man as she did. He continued to talk as they got into their seats.

"My diplomatic attaché wanted me to burn native Barryaran vegetation; give you a more 'authentic' experience so to speak. I would have too, if there wasn't the awful chance that you'd have a hellish allergic reaction to it. We've lived on Barrayar for a double-dozen generations and more, and we still have to check exactly what we're cooking dinner with before we light it up. It wouldn't be fair to have you breaking out in a rash so early in your mission to us."

He was shorter, she noticed, than most of the Barryarans she'd seen up to now. Sort of stocky (as his photographs had shown), grey, cropped hair, and solid. Hard-bodied enough for it to appear strange that he was the remote brains behind the stunning victory over the Selby Fleet that had been hired to protect Komarran space, and then the lightning seizure of all the wormhole exit points in the system. The man she saw should have been some hard-bitten colonel in charge of ground assaults, speaking more in grunt-like fragments than the warmly amused tones his gravelly voice managed to convey.

"Admiral, a pleasure to meet you."

"Captain, even more of a pleasure to meet you. I suppose you're going to show me the legendary versatility of the Betan Survey Service: find a wormhole, survey a system, arrange a treaty… it's all just part of a day's work for you! We poor specialists-"

"Admiral Vorkosigan, you know as well as I do why I'm here, there's no reason to try to charm me out of my sarong. Can I go down there? Will I be let up again? And what will you charge in service fees?"

"Captain Naismith: yes, yes, and ten percent. Because you're Betan, and I'm sentimental, I'll even refund you the bribe you gave to my appointment secretary. Not to be offensive, but he says that you really don't have the gift for it. You paid far too much, and… well, he said you were almost painfully awkward at corrupting him. Don't be, that's how he winnows out the petitioners that aren't serious. Those that are willing to put up major money, well… those are the ones we focus our investigations on. It also gives us some extra leverage, bribing an Imperial Officer is such a serious crime!" Vorkosigan gave a rumbling chuckle at that, and Cordelia couldn't prevent herself from smiling at his obvious glee.

"And the ones who won't, or can't cough up major money, Admiral?"

"We keep on processing their business at the normal rate. Doing things this way lets us concentrate our Intelligence resources where they'll do the most good. And it lets honest businessmen get along with their lives. I bet when Henri took your bribe you felt devilishly wicked, didn't you?"

Cordelia poured herself a cup of tea, looked over at Vorkosigan, and poured one for him at his miniscule nod. She wondered if she was expected to somehow sneak the B$20,000 into her personal accounts. And, if so, if it was going to be Barryaran or Betan Intelligence services who would be looking hardest to see where the money ended up.

"You don't tell everyone you play with what your games are, do you Admiral?" Cordelia asked.

"You impressed Henri. You absolutely loathed doing it, but you squared your shoulders, and soldiered on. They say Diplomats are honorable men who are paid to lie for their country. If so, you should never get a major ambassadorship. You have no taste for that type of thing. In fact, you should get out of the political business completely. It stains the soul. And in the end you paid too much, anyway."

Cordelia chuckled lowly: "I'm not completely pure, Admiral. Even in the sand-clean Survey Service we have to stain ourselves a bit, from time to time. If you can teach me how to wallow here, properly, it might be the making of my career."

"No, that will be when you return to Beta with a credit chip for twenty or forty million in your pocket. Somehow everyone loves the person who brings home the money, at least for a little while. I advise you to make the most of that most transient of emotions, gratitude. I've discovered it has a half-life shorter than most of the transuranics."

It seemed a bit much, coming from him. Connected to the ruling house, born into the highest nobility to begin with, and one of the youngest admirals she'd heard about. Yes, nepotism had certainly played its huge role in his opportunities, but here he was, satrap of a major wormhole junction. She didn't see how he'd know much about ingratitude, except as the dispenser of it.

Seeing the look of incredulity on her face, he continued.

"You don't believe me? You are looking at the newest minted Admiral in Barrayaran service. 'What?' you say! 'Wasn't he the officer who commanded the original occupation of the Outer System here?' I was broken a month into the clean up. Kill one little political commissioner! Pfft! There goes your career, welcome home to Camp Permafrost! You don't know what it took to get back into place where I can use my talents for my Emperor!"

Cordelia had never heard so much controlled mocking bitterness in a single burst of speech. Embarrassed for him she looked around the room, and saw plaques mounted on the walls, and the heads of beasts on them. Fighting back her revulsion, she filled the awkward silence with an inquiry if they were his personal… trophies.

Vorkosigan's face lit up like a boy's.

"Fakes! Fakes every one! This room is supposed to be some sort of lounge area, like a private club for pre-spaceflight officers and aristos. And the Interior Designer insisted that there had to be hunting trophies up on the walls, with little brass labels below them describing the circumstances of their assassinations. Well, Barrayar doesn't have wildlife that is either large or impressive, and the costs of shipping a hunting party all the way to Terra was considered too much. So the prop department of the leading theater in Vorbar Sultana ran these up, inspired by the theory that there couldn't be too many tusks or antlers on a Vorish trophy. They're much better than real, you know. No rotting or mold, guaranteed good for two hundred years standard or your money back."

From then on, all serious business settled, they chatted, and with no clocks or interruptions, by the time Captain Vorpatril showed up to remind the Admiral that he had a diplomatic dinner to attend with the Escobaran Ambassador, she had certainly gotten more than a half-hour for her bribe. And that had been refunded anyway.

* * *

"They're eating us alive," Cordelia's Komarran 'minder' repeated for the third time that day. Her native guide wasn't showing any notable signs of malnutrition. He was wearing a presentable but fairly drab version of the ubiquitous generic 'galactic' standard garb; shirt, long vest, trousers, half-boots. Indoors… and on Komarr you were either indoors or in full enviro gear with a reserve air-tank if you were serious about things… it was enough to be comfortable anywhere in the 'domes' of any of the cities on the planet.

In a way it felt like home to her; a world inside a constructed tube, the only advantage compared to a pure space station was a thicker protective layer of atmosphere, and on Beta somewhere to burrow into for protection. If planetary settlements hadn't become a tradition before proper knowledge of wormholes and gravity control technology had become widespread it would probably have just been easier to avoid planets entirely except as convenient piles of building materials. She was lucky herself; most other Betans were more or less uneasy when they first met a shirt-sleeves planetary environment. Spaceships, of course, provided all the visual, auditory and other sensory clues to ease their agoraphobic selves. Betans were famous for the attention they paid to their ships as they orbited their destinations. They rarely found the time to get away from their important maintenance duties and visit the dirtballs below.

As they went from one fiscal institution and trading company to the next one on her list (doing personal contacts had been stressed, minimal use of comms that might be tapped by… anyone), much the same sort of comment had been made by bankers and merchant princes (now rapidly descending the Komarran power pyramid), and industrial moguls who were seeing their futures as the foremen of boutique machine shops: "We're dying." We're strangling." "They're bleeding us like some vampire!"

At each office she arranged for the pick-up or the settlement or the account closing. Her instructions had been clear, and the business itself was simple enough. She did wonder, however… why her? Why a Captain of the Survey Service to arrange the closing out of Betan commercial contact on Komarr, the new lost planet?

True, she was under government security in a way that a civilian wasn't. Beta didn't have all that many government officials that had as varied experience with alien cultures as a Survey officer, and most of them were booked months in advance. The Barrayaran notice that all investments, accounts, and inventory on Komarr would become inaccessible when extra-planetary communications was to be subjected to a six months 'systems upgrading' had spurred (finally) the government to rush out the least unqualified person for dealing with the Barrayaran barbarians that they could find. Maybe… it still didn't really track for her, but at least it was safer than a blind jump through an unproven wormhole.

So she arranged for unpaid for and warehoused Betan owned or consigned goods to be shipped up to the orbital transfer stations they shouldn't have diverted from in the first place, and had bonded security firms check each container to see if a little 'shrinkage' had taken place since the original, irregular transfer. Betan-owned real estate was sold off (with canny buyers realizing it was going at fire-sale prices). On a more profitable note, a discrete arrangement transferred half the remaining Galen merchant fleet to Betan registry, also at fire-sale prices, but this time in Beta's favor. It wasn't as if the Galen Oligarch was going to get much else use or profit out of them; the window for such transfers was coming to an end too soon to allow the current crippled communications off planet to arrange a better deal.

As she arranged one deal to cover the next, she realized her prior career in supply and command had been a better fit for this type of thing than she had originally imagined. Also, dealing with out-worlder's legal systems and quaint social customs (bribes not being only a Barrayaran practice) was something her shepherding of her Survey ship through a dozen different jurisdictions had prepared her for.

She knew she was doing a good job. Still, that was not enough reason for it to be her here being the one to do it.

They were right, the Komarrans. They were dying, rotting by a hair's width more each day. Without the income from the factories, repair shops, and ships chandlers the dull sun shone redly on an increasingly dingy world. The high tolls they had charged, to the anger of those who had to go through the system, had been their luxury budget. Mostly the luxury of those who controlled thousands of votes through their family's accumulation through the centuries (those who control the votes, controlled the laws. And the government contracts, and the access to business opportunities…), but some had trickled down to the independent companies that scrambled for the crumbs of commerce the major families hadn't yet decided were worthwhile snapping up. Now all the trickling stream was dry, and as neither imports nor exports nor tolls were coming in everyone was feeling the economic vise tighten.

The Barraryarans allowed fuel for the power plants to come in, and a decreasing amount of low tech and small scale manufacturing equipment. And damn little else. Hence the flight of Betan capital from the Independent but isolated planet called Komarr. All the wormhole termini, and all the outer asteroids and debris was under Barryaran control. The only Komarrans who were in space now were the few thousand who had been wildcatting when the conquest had taken place, and those that had been crewing the Komarran argosies at that time.

And as they had came in to their home, before the news had gone out of the change in ownership of the wormholes, they had been taken neat as a fox took a hen (to use an expression old before Beta had been discovered), except for the Toscane Venture, which had been vaporized as it came in-system. She remembered now, there had been something messy about that; claims and counterclaims about responsibility. Yes that must have been when Vorkosigan first lost the rank he had held when he first commanded the takeover. She supposed he must have been cleared of responsibility in the end. "Kill one little political commissioner." He must have felt aggrieved to have his near-perfect conquest blighted by a trigger-happy fool. "Kill one…" he was dangerous. He had felt dangerous. She hadn't felt the least bit threatened… why not? Another mystery of this whole assignment.

* * *

This time she didn't bother nerving herself up to finding who to bribe. Even pretending at that game would have been too depressing; the entire, almost completed _Vashnoi Kremlin_ being in official mourning. There was sad music playing over the announcement system, and everyone wearing black armbands as they went about their duties. The Prince was dead, and his heir was young, too young, while the Emperor was old, too old. Even Cordelia could feel the hidden anxiety; the Old Order was soon to pass away, and the New Order was going to be in the hands of whoever ended up controlling a child. On Barrayar wars had been fought over that, who was to be the regent for a juvenile heir. No one knew if it would be happening again.

When Vorpatril brought her to the system's commander he wasn't in a chatting mood. He didn't bring her to the same, informal, meeting place. Instead they entered a medium-sized office that either had the best screen view she'd ever seen, or else the room was graced with a wall on the exterior of the fortress. The desk and chairs in the room were large, ostentatious, and exactly what a warrior-admiral should have been equipped with. Near Vorkosigan there was, standing in a corner, a slender, blond man who's self-effacing stance and demeanor made Cordelia instantly suspicious about him. No one on the up-and-up had the right to be so nearly invisible.

Behind Vorkosigan were three photos mounted on the wall. The one on the right, the one of a young man, had black ribbons draped on its frame. The others; a white haired man who looked like the grandfather you wanted, if you wanted a grandfather that had fought in one war after another until he ruled an empire, and a dark haired young boy. They were spared any ribbons. So: the Prince, the Emperor, and the new Heir Apparent. On Vorkosigan's desk was another picture frame in a stand. This one had ribbons also; a nosegay-like arrangement in white and pink. She wondered who that one was of. Oddly enough, Vorkosigan was the calmest and least affected by the recent events of all the Barrayarans that she had met since the news had broken.

Perhaps he saw an opportunity for advancement, though how much further up the pole could he go… ah. She remembered her briefings; he was the Admiral in charge of the biggest cash cow in the Barrayaran Empire, with most of the fleet under his command while the fortresses defending the Komarran Wormhole Junction were put on-line. His father was not only a major noble, but a general in their ground forces back on Barrayar. And also how he was now only two lives away from the throne; one of them too old, and one of them too young. She thought about how that sort of situation usually played out.

She wondered if the little boy portrayed up on the wall was lucky, and Vorkosigan had a daughter or sister not too different from him in age. If the hard man in front of her was by their standards honorable, perhaps the boy might live to see his next birthday. The Prince was dead, and the Count had a festive display on his desk. She had to ask.

"So you've received some good news? And my condolences on the Empire's recent lose."

"Yes, Serge's demise is proving quite unsettling to us all. But few men are completely irreplaceable, even Princes, and My Lord Ezar has, as usual, a plan for even this turn of events."

"And your good news is? Something familial to lessen the sting of the Prince's… misfortune?"

"Yes," Vorkosigan said, "I've lost my ex-brother-in-law." He turned the picture frame around so she could see a darkly handsome man. Something about the smile, the way his eyes were set, made her shiver.

"I can see that you're a perceptive person, Captain Naismith," Vorkosigan continued, "not many people would have known to run from Ges on just seeing his photograph. I didn't." The last was said in one of his sudden changes of tone and emotion. A raw hatred had darkened and hardened his voice. "He was the second most evil person I've ever met."

Cordelia couldn't see any merely social conversation going anywhere from that point. The only way that topic of conversation could have continued would have been if they were alone, at midnight, and a large bottle or two of high-proof whiskey was at hand.

She gulped a bit, and then surged on with her proper and official business.

"I'm sure you've gotten all my reports, requests for lift-space, and monetary transfers. Do you have problem with any of them?"

Vorkosigan had turned Ges' picture back to face himself, looked at it again, and smiled as he shook his head.

"Honest, efficient, thorough. Beta should be proud of you. All approved, all approved, if there are any minor paper-errors they'll be smoothed over. We all want this business over before Komarr is… temporarily incommunicado. And Beta is our friend."

"Will it be temporary?" Cordelia asked, her eyes boring into his, noting his smile turning to gentle mockery again.

"Of course; most temporary, in the scheme of things.

"How did you find conditions Downside? Surprised to find a lack of armored troopers on every street corner? Was all the air still blowing clean, and enough food on the tables? We'd allow them more imports, but they are having some cash-flow problems at the moment. We'd had something like that ourselves, when they controlled the wormholes and set the toll rate, so we understand the problem."

Anger began to seep into her voice as she replied: "You're de-industrializing them; how long do you think they can survive without access to galactic commerce? Without their fleets and tolls how can they afford things like new supplies for their Uterine Replicators, or the maintaining the Soletta? That's their hope for the future; are you that cruel?"

Vorkosigan took in one or two harsh breaths, and then a genuine smile crossed his face, as if he was seeing something pleasant.

"Prince Gregor," and with that he half swiveled his chair and his head gave a slight nod of respectful acknowledgment to the picture of the three-year-old boy, "has promised, in memory of his father's name," but this time there was no motion by the Admiral, or respectful gesture, "that the Komarran Soletta satellite will have two new, additional, vanes installed. We've made the budget adjustments for that, and maintenance. It'll be paid for out of the tolls; it will take a few years, though. When we dropped them to fifteen percent from twenty-five we lost a bit of fiscal flexibility, though the diplomatic fall-out was very… positive. Two percent will be allocated to that project and an emergency fund for Komarr; we'll have to forego a new cruiser for the Navy next year, but keeping the good opinion of our friends is worth it, don't you agree?"

Seeing some hint of humanity in the man she forged ahead, hoping to get at least a little benefit of his good humor over this Ges' death. Barrayarans!

"And medical supplies and the Replicators? How will they have a next generation if they can't have babies?"

"Replicators? Oh, Uterine Replicators… something reproductive, I guess?" He turned his head to the self-effacing presence in the corner and cocked his head in inquiry, "Simon?"

The man's head nodded slightly: "Yes, Admiral. Artificial wombs. Genetic material is examined, has any problems fixed, is put in, and months later babies are taken out." The Nearly-Invisible Man looked a little embarrassed to have actually had to confirm his presence in the room.

Cordelia heard Vorkosigan say in a low voice, "We could use something like that back home."

Yes, even barbarians could be educated!

Back into his 'business' tone, Vorkosigan continued: "Any needed medical supplies will be allowed down-side, we'll find some room in the budget, somewhere. We mustn't shortchange the next generation." Then his voice went inquiring and uncertain again, almost boyish, "Really, it's that common?"

Cordelia replied, "Yes, totally standard. I'm a UR girl myself. Much safer than the… old way."

How sad and dangerous it must be for the women of Barrayar, doing body-births. She hadn't realized that it still existed outside of historical novels. It probably explained so much about their history; they were practically living in another time-period!

Vorkosigan opened a drawer in his desk and took out a large sealed envelope, and an open edged folder. She took them in hand and looked into the folder; in it were her clearances for both material and cash transfers, as well as her travel permits, all approved. Evidently Vorkosigan was being as good as his word.

"The envelope has materials you should look at when you're back in your room, there should be someone coming to meet you there in a little while," he said. "You're rather arid honesty hasn't gone un-noticed; you have to expect that sometimes. I must say that I'm most impressed with your performance, and wouldn't object to having you under my command any day."

After such a commonplace formal compliment she wondered why… Simon, was it, gave such a start. Oh, purely male military. That Vorkosigan said something like that… interesting.

"Thank you, Admiral, but I'll stay in the Survey. I'd rather not be shooting at people if I can avoid it."

He surprised her with "That's actually true about most of us in the military too. What's even worse, of course, is when someone is shooting back, though." And then he chuckled at her grin.

There wasn't a formal dismissal, but Cordelia felt she shouldn't stay any longer. With Simon showing no inclination to leave his corner-filling duties it would have been awkward to try to engage Vorkosigan in… less official conversation. As she stood up the Admiral flipped a switch on the console built into his desk, and Vorpatril entered all too efficiently to escort her back to her suite, where she supposed she would be soon getting a surprise guest. She wondered who…

* * *

It was over an hour later that Commodore William Tailor, her superior in the Betan Astronomical Survey, buzzed her door and was admitted. Being Betans there wasn't any great deal of saluting or exchange of military courtesies. She got right to the point.

"What the hell is this contract about, Bill?" She demanded as she waved the paperwork she had pulled out from the sealed envelope she had been given in Vorkosigan's office.


	2. Chapter 2

I do not own, or receive any benefit, from the Vorkosigan properties.

A Kinder Killing

Chapter 2

By Larry Huss

"What the hell is this contract, Bill?" Cordelia Naismith asked her commanding officer, not bother getting up from seat at the room's comconsole-equipped desk. She flipped off the legal analysis program she'd had running, checking for loopholes and jokers in the document in question.

"Well, you were here, and they evidently are willing to get outside of their comfort zone in specifying a woman. You must have been pretty impressive the last month or so; Barrayarans are less than gender-blind in general. Very much 'Kinder, Kuche, Kirche' you know. Without any particular 'Kirche' as far as I can see, but still…"

"As funny as ever… Mr. Tailor. I don't care if they burn goats or each other; I've had about as much of these smirking bastards as I can handle for a while. A well-rounded resume isn't worth having to put up with their smug destruction of a civilized planet."

Tailor looked concerned at that; the facetious grin on his face disappeared, and a note of real concern came into his voice:

"Your reports haven't mentioned they were getting brutal down there! That's why we were so glad when they finally accepted someone to do the wind-up of our affairs on-site. So they're… eliminating potential agitators now? Saints… that's what we were afraid of… we knew they had a grudge with the Komarrans almost as bad as their one with the Cetas. Do you have any proof? Holos of any sort will be more effective ammunition for the Foreign Relations Board, if they're not faked up."

"Not like that, Bill. You're looking for a blunt instrument, or a smoking gun. They're going to de-civilize Komarr, step by step and year by year until they just curl up and die, or become cavewomen."

Tailor gave a sigh of relief; Cordelia could see that he was surprisingly calm about her tirade. As if as soon as she declared the Barrayarans hadn't cracked open all the domes of the twenty Sectors below them all of his concerns had gone away. A thought… irritating like something caught between her teeth… was almost where she could get at it. So she baited what she hoped was a hook, and threw it out. She had done that physically years ago with her father at Geode Reservoir; catch and release. Now she'd try a gentler verbal version of it… it wouldn't do to set the hook too deep into her boss' mouth.

"Even with the additions to the Soletta, it'll be hundreds of years before Komarr will be shirtsleeve, doesn't anybody care back in the sandbox? Down there they'll be dependent on Barrys not dropping rocks on them for that long… do you trust that bunch of militaristic thugs not to solve their little problem as soon as civilized folks get used to not thinking about Komarr, or checking up on it? Now that Beta hasn't got any outstanding accounts down there, will even the Foreign Relations Board bother to keep track… and when the rocks fall, will everyone just say 'too bad, but it's too late to do anything anyway', and just look away because travel through the Junction is now ten per cent less expensive!"

Perhaps she wasn't being as cool and clever as she had planned, Cordelia thought, and tried to catch her breath.

"Fifteen percent; we have Most Favored Planet status," Tailor said.

Her mouth gaped open; she was the one who had just felt the hook.

"Komarr's twenty-five percent fees was strangling trade in this section of the Nexus, except for the Cetas… they were getting a preferred rate, in exchange for Komarr having an inside track to trade on their planets. Sixteen planets, owned or under their thumbs… the Cetas had a lot of pull with the local merchant princes. And with Cetaganda having a near-free run in the area they were picking up influence and control over most of the commerce going into Vervain, through their own turf and through the Hegan Hub coming from this direction. They've done this same thing before. Somebody had to get in their way."

"Th-this is all about mercantile competition with Cetaganda?" Cordelia spluttered out.

His eyes had suddenly gotten hard, crafty. They moved across the room, and finally rested on the comconsole with its blinking 'ready' light. He didn't look away until he saw in his peripheral vision that she had turned to his visual target.

"Naismith, Official Secrets Act. _You do not need to know_! It's deeper than that, and I'm an idiot enough already. I won't get you burned. I'll see what I can do to… I'll see what I can do. Keep your mouth shut, and sign the damn contract. It's a straight enough piece of boilerplate. No big policy stuff, and you're damn well better able to handle the job than you are to decide the fate of nations!"

She flicked the Comconsole off. "You really think so?"

"Saints, Cordi, yes, yes! Ship captain is your forte; interstellar woman of mystery… not so much."

"Which saints are you swearing by today, Bill?"

For a second he got a thoughtful look, then replied firmly, "Jude, definitely Saint Jude."

"That's the thief, right?" she asked.

"That's Saint Dismas," he said. "Saint Jude is in charge of lost causes. He's the one I always pray to when I think about your career!"

A great sigh broke out of him: "Anyway, you'll be pleased to know we've got something better than these obsolescent hulks the Barrys call a research vessel. The _Norton Forerunner_ just left midlife rehab, and she'll be here within the week. Now it's either you skipper her, or who knows what Vorkosigan will lumber her with at the helm. He's going to put a couple of his men aboard in any case… expect spies pretending to be students. Oh, Tommy Newbrecker will be your jump pilot; he's the one that goes on sound. Now, you wouldn't inflict some Barrayaran military martinet on old Tommy, would you? Or Tommy on someone who might actually be sane and rational before the trip started, for that matter. I'm sure there's something in the Luna Accords about Tommy, somewhere."

She laughed at that; she'd always gotten along with Newbrecker, it was just a matter of keeping him busy doing off-the-wall research projects on his own whenever he wasn't piloting his ship through the synesthesia-inducing environment of a wormhole transit. Someone who hadn't learned the trick, on the other hand, would… well a Barrayaran naval officer probably brig him on the second day out, and have to come home the long way round.

"So… they went through all this to get a better fix on the entrance zone that smeared their Prince into subatomic particles? Got a real Survey crew, even Tommy? You must be charging them through the nose on this one. Why didn't they get another captain from Beta when they hired the ship in the first place?"

Tailor reflexively gave a furtive glance around the room, as if he was going to spot one of the sound pickups or cameras he was sure was observing them at that very moment. He wasn't nearly as go-to-hell as Cordelia was with overbearing authority figures, so being under surveillance made Tailor… nervous. Finally he shrugged; it would have made him feel better to wait on this until they were able to talk in a bug-free cabin on the Survey ship, but it was undoubtedly better to let Cordi know what he had figured out.

"Well, you're a woman."

"Last time I looked. The cost of a change operation isn't covered by our medical plan you know, and I'm saving up for a vacation to Earth, so I've put off my gender re-assignment for this week."

Evidently she had thought about the possibility that her room was being spied on, and couldn't resist a few digs at her (potential) observers' sensitivities.

"Vorkogisan," Tailor said. "He asked for you especially, while you were still down there. I think it's political; maybe social also."

"Oh no… he's got a thing for me, you think?" She laughed.

"Competent women. I mean… for his politics. He's supposed to be their best strategic thinker, that's why he got the original Komarr operation. And, I think, he's been turning his thoughts toward his home planet. The social system, I mean. It's… I've been there. A few islands of modern in a sea of… Earth before the Industrial Revolution. The way I see it… he's seeing how much waste their system is, women being kept to ten percent of their potential, peasants bound to the local District, the whole mess. He wants to start planting the seeds to change things, and he'd like to start by seeing how good a woman really is. And he's smart enough to know that if you want the best, you go to the Survey. If you impress him right, he'll probably start things going in his District… his father is basically lord of a couple hundred thousand square kilometers of land, and maybe a million or so subjects. So… are you willing to impress him?"

She growled a little as she went through the flimsies in the folder until she found the one with the contract signature sheet, and scrawled her name on the line with a slash of the stylus. Then she turned the Comconsole back on, and fed the sheet into the slot on its front. When it appeared on the screen she clicked the keys to acknowledge her agreement that what was shown was a true and honest copy of her agreement to the terms.

"I just love having the responsibility to uplift a million people or more from serfdom all by my pure and noble character!" she rasped.

"If that works out, there'll be a lot of pressure to start things going in a good direction for the other forty, fifty, million or so on the dirtball," Tailor said cheerfully.

"Now, how much do you know about how that Prince died?" he asked.

"New wormhole, accident probably because… well… Barrayarans probably aren't ready yet to do a blind jump. So Prince Vainglorious hops onto the ship doing the first jump through the sixth wormhole they just discovered here, and gets smeared.

"I was down-side when it happened, and you can believe that the full details of the event were not being sent down there. Though, when the news came there was a two-day party, and I couldn't get a bit of business done until everybody sobered up. Still, that's the basic structure, right?"

"Not… exactly," Tailor said. And as she had now signed the contract and acknowledged she would protect the Client's confidentiality, he gave her all the little details that meant so much.

The newly discovered sixth wormhole out of Komarr had been found by the Barrayarans doing a survey of their new possession, including the far sections of the systems that had neither useful asteroids nor any other obvious value. They had charted it, sent a ship through, found a vast emptiness lacking even a sun. Disappointed ,they had slacked their efforts until some bored ship, positive that they had been sent there as a punishment for some obscure mistake, discovered a new jump point leading out of the darkness, and set up beacons to mark the zone. Repeated, this time with greater enthusiasm, things led eventually to an important Discovery (Cordelia could just hear the capitalization in Bill's voice) that had attracted the Prince to do a little jaunt to get away from his inspirational tour of the Komarr system stations. On his way back from the Discovery, his ship, entourage, and crew had their misfortune.

The ship and crew that were lost were evidently the best that the Barayarans had for the work, so to find out what had gone wrong they hired the Betan Astronomical Survey. Ships had evidently come back from the Discovery, how else was it reported? But it was evident that there was something tricky out there, and evidently no one but Captain Cordelia Naismith would do for figuring out the trick.

XXX

"I take the Bridge," she said, and Arty Longet replied: "Captain has the Bridge."

"Skipper, nothing new; the boffins are refining the initial entry vectors, but the received data is acceptable enough for commercial use. And this isn't where the accident happened, anyway."

She gave a sideways glance at where two of the Barrayaran students/apprentices/spies were busy going over everything they'd done in the last few hours to make sure there wasn't anything that would make them look stupid to the Betans. At the same time, they were also trying to listen in, without appearing to, to the recently relieved Officer Of The Deck and the Captain. Every bridge crew did this to some extent, but most didn't make it a point of honor to yell at their superior officers at every supposed slight to their point of origin.

Well, Lieutenant Timoshenko had seemed to be an embarrassment to his compatriots also; at least they had been as eager as anyone to weld the hasp and staple on the doorway of the small, unused compartment, allowing the _Norton Forerunner _to become the first Betan Astronomical Survey ship ever to have a real, official brig. In fact, the other three Barrayaran flight crew seemed suspiciously content that Timoshenko was out of the way (and having his pay docked). What Lieutenant Simon Illyan, seemingly always there when you turned around, thought of the situation was more… undefined. But then, Illyan was always willing to be silent and inscrutable, except when he was being vocal and inscrutable.

From the bland and almost vague look in his eyes, to the absolutely relaxed way he was always somehow there when you looked hard enough to penetrate his invisible field of invisibility, the man with the Horus-eye pins in his collar lived up the reputation of Imperial Security; he saw all, and said nothing you could get a handle on. Cordelia found him very calming. At least she didn't have to pretend he wasn't a spy.

What he was looking for was unclear, however. He never attempted to interfered with any of the training she had imposed for the Barrayaran crew, nor had he attempted to defend Timoshenko when she'd had him dragged off the bridge, not quite frothing at the mouth, on being told by the "Fucking Betan Bitch!" that the best and brightest of the Barrayaran Navy, Astrogation Branch, were just promising students by Galactic standards. The other Barrayaran who had been on watch that cycle had looked embarrassed, but had managed to hold his tongue well enough; it was a shame Timoshenko was unable to understand that the reason the Betan Survey could get away with such loose _formal_ discipline was that it was _built inside_ of each spacer instead. His lack of perception had led him into further… improprieties… which had led him to his current, unique, residency.

Still, pleasurable reminiscences of kneeing an idiot in the groin when he refused to go to his quarters after he attempted to throttle his commanding officer would have to wait. It was crunch time. She sat in her chair, buckled herself in, and entered her ID code into the Command comconsole. As it acknowledged her she typed in three commands, and pushed Enter. Then she made her official, recorded authorization command:

"Please call Jump-pilot Newbrecker to his station. Initiate the thirty minute warning sequence for wormhole jump procedure. Make sure that all crew and-"she looked around to see if Illyan had somehow crept up into her blind spot while she wasn't paying attention, "deadheads are properly alerted and have moved to their jump stations.

"Will the Normal Space Pilot on Duty please move the ship to the coordinates that have been entered on to his 'console screen, and set thrust and vector settings as indicated."

A bald and grey-bearded man entered the compartment. By stretching things so far that they snapped, but not too loudly, he was dressed in something almost resembling a Survey uniform. Almost the same number of pockets, and he had obligingly sewed on his insignia of service and specialty. That the color was a deep maroon (today, at least) instead of khaki, and the legs had been hacked off at the knee level was worthy of comment. It was only fair; the shirt terminated at the shoulders, with little white wisps of cotton thread (he swore by it, for the comfort) that indicated that he felt that the temperature of the ship was being kept at an unreasonably warm level for this trip. She'd seen him bundled up in sweaters and thermal underwear on other ships, at other times. At least this time he wasn't wearing an out of date civilian sarong.

"Coming on the Bridge, mon Capitaine! How're they hangin' Cordi?"

"All in place, Jump-pilot, all in place. I've loaded your screen, and we're positioning right now for entry. So far there is no data indicating deviance from previous survey data. Let me know when you are ready to receive command."

Cordelia looked around at the Bridge crew. Most of those there were just making sure that their data reception and relay to the beacons were working at nominal. The Barrayarans, one of whom was working as Normal Space Pilot, were red-faced as they did their preparations.

Tommy Newbrecker tended to do that to people who weren't used to him. Jump-pilots always were given a lot of leeway, and Tommy was a rule onto himself. When you were the best… or at least good enough to convince your bosses you were irreplaceable… an awful lot of willful eccentricity could be excused. And if setting up the inputs from the Jump Controls to send signals to his auditory center rather than optical wasn't the definition of eccentric, there probably wasn't really one at all.

She put all other considerations aside as time shortened until their entry. Newbrecker connected the contact points from his implant into his station. The large countdown clock on the screen that she had pivoted in front of her clicked its way down toward zero and then

XXX

She had a raging headache and a stomach that threatened to exit her body through her mouth. As the sensors and computers started rebooting, she saw Tommy disconnecting himself from the ship's systems. The others were in various states of recovery as she began to go through the checklists of systems as they came available. Making sure that everything was stable as soon as a jump was over could be the difference from a run-away fusion bottle and one clamped down in time. Sometimes she thought that her quick recovery time from wormhole jumps had been the deciding factor in her getting the first promotions from tech to the command track.

"How'd it sound, Tommy?"

"Dull, too many flats, and the tempo… uninspired. Well, Mon Capitaine, I leave the rest of the flat space voyage to you and your team of trusty minions." With that he shot out a snappy, and completely non-regulation, salute, and sauntered off the Bridge. He was still looking through the last beacon records for the _Pierre Le Sanguinaire _before she made her last jump. He swore he'd bread-boarded up a rig that let him get the harmonies (his way of registering a wormhole jump; other pilots mentioned colors or tastes) even from recordings. Of course, he wouldn't have a real data-set comparison until he played back the _Norton_'s record of her jump back in the same direction.

One by one the stations came back online. One by one they reported in. From down on the storage deck Third Officer Tompkins reported in that Timoshenko had recovered quickly, and was cursing up a blue streak in some language or other that wasn't near Standard English while he smashed his body against the door as if he expected it to just pop open. Cordelia smiled; there wasn't much chance of a key-operated padlock opening up just because all the ship's electronics had a mild seizure as it went through the rabbit hole. Dull metal didn't know enough to react to entering a new dimensional framework; it just went on working as it was designed to. People kept on expecting Betans to act like head-in-clouds academics… as if people like that could survive for long in the Survey!

What the Hell? The Comm board was transferring a hail and challenge to her station.

"This is the Barrayaran Imperial Vessel _Main-Gauche_; Please identify yourself. Do not power up any weapons or targeting arrays. Please respond immediately!" The face of a man in early middle age, in a dark blue formal tunic, with lighter blue collar tabs appeared.

"Please connect me, Phillips," she said to the officer crewing the Communications and Sensor station. Marjorie went "Yo!", and the green light went on in the upper right corner of her display.

"This is the Betan Astronomical Survey vessel _Norton Forerunner_, on Charter to the Barrayaran Astrogation Branch, Naismith commanding."

Coming out of the audio link she could hear what sounded like jubilation from the other ship.

"Dieu merci! This is Captain Marc Duquesne. After we sent the _Lapin Gris_ we went crazy waiting to see if they made it to the other side. We could tell they hadn't gone up like the _Bloody Pete_… sorry, _Pierre Le Sanguinaire_… but then there were those weeks with nobody coming through…"

"And that's what we were hired for," Cordelia replied. "We've been surveying the route back to Komarr step by step, making sure that there isn't anything odd or unstable going on. Clear flying all the way, you can rest assured," here she surreptitiously tapped a genuine imitation wood-grain covered section of the arm of her chair, "that you aren't trapped here. You can go home."

Captain Duquesne visibly relaxed. Cordelia remembered a bit of less-current Barrayaran history; being deep in the ass-end of nowhere with a mal-functioning wormhole being your only way out… not something a Barrayaran would find comfortable.

A section of her display began to register other communications channels being used in system. At least four other active transmitters, three located within a few thousand kilometers of each other, were active. The last was a few million kilometers off to low-rear (from the _Norton_'s orientation), and was seemingly doing its damnedest (considering it had the wrong equipment for the job) to analyze the wormhole the _Norton Forerunner_ had just transited.

"As acting senior Naval Officer on station, I'm calling for a joint staff meeting of all command level personnel, including those on chartered vessels, to take place at Discovery Base on Planet 2, to take place at 1400 hours on this coming Tuesday. Lieutenant, please pass the message to the relevant commands." For a few seconds after that Duquesne was silent, then he smiled and nodded his head, having reached some agreement with himself.

"Captain Naismith, I'm not sure our calendars are in synch, but that's in two days. I'm sending over the data for the location for the meeting. It'll be planet side, so you'll have to shuttle down, allow the time.

"Hell, I'll get the planetary environmental data over too. Basically no special gear needed, the location is in local temperate season, no known transmittable diseases we haven't brought with us. If you'll send the data for the wormhole that you've collected over I'll send the _Alexander von Humboldt_ back to pull in some supplies. We were really starting to worry that we'd have to start eating rat-bars in another few weeks. Some of the local fauna seems to be edible, but the long term ingestion… isn't proven yet. When you get there, we'll coordinate parking orbits. Duquesne out."

So the Discovery was a Goldilocks planet. Somebody must be trying to make it up to the Barrayarans for their previous hard times; not one in a hundred jumps ended up at a new one of those. Too bad the Barrayaran presence was so complete; there wasn't any way she could snag this one for Beta. There was probably something else going on, also. Duquesne was delaying a full in-person briefing until he'd had some time to do a little story-arranging with his underlings. Still, the likelihood of something outré coming their way was low. If nothing else, Illyan was Vorkosigan's man, and if she was (in a very different and non-personal way) Vorkosigan's woman there shouldn't be anything political screwing things up. Shouldn't be...

XXX

It was, she admitted, a lovely view. They were sitting in an open-to-the winds porch stuck out from the Primus System Commander's (Rolf Vorgustavson, Brigadier) personal pre-fab bungalow. A separate building housed both the System and Planetary Administrative offices, and the Officer's Mess. A name which would have been all too appropriate for what they'd have been served if the _Norton_'s holds hadn't still been almost half-filled with fresh(er) stuff picked up before leaving Komarr space. Only about ten per cent of the local material was estimated to be even marginally edible. Since most of what the Barrayarans had been using to stretch out their supplies had been fauna, rather than flora, Cordelia had been picking a bit at her meal. Not just living tissue, but wild… Fortunately, no one had made a big deal of that, though the degree of courtesy she'd been exposed to since setting down had tended to be toward the extreme. She was evidently somewhere between being a valued ally, a visiting princess, and an antique crystal-glass goblet. Treated almost reverently, but too fragile to actually take any jolts.

Now the dishes from the meal had been cleared away, a few-ice loaded buckets with carefully hoarded bottles of wine were set in the shade of the overhang, and suitable goblets were at hand for personal consumption as thirst demanded.

Thom Vortain (District Observer, Ministry of Political Education) placed a recording device in the middle of the table, looked around at the others, received nods, and turned it on. An array of lenses protruded out of the thing, each person getting their own one busily focusing on them. Cordelia noticed less… hostility toward Vortain than she'd seen at other occasions when a MOPE officer was involved with other departments. Probably out here, where people had to get along or go crazy, and there was little chance for garnering brownie points with superiors, there was a good deal less tension between the governmental branches.

Vorgustavson began the official part of the meeting: "Captain Duquesne… status of our local space and its commerce and activity?"

Duquesne picked up his end of the conversation. "Betan ship on charter by the Imperial Navy, Komarr Station, _Norton Forerunner,_ has come in to do astronomical surveys of the wormholes of the area. Having confirmed the safety of the string leading back to Komarr Station, I've ordered our vessel _Alexander von Humboldt_ to return to Komarr Station and report our status, and request the replenishment of needed supplies.

"Otherwise, our remaining ship on station, the _Maine-Gauche_, is still fully ready to perform any defensive or exploratory work within her sensor limits in-system."

Vorgustavson turned to Professor Corvinus, on leave from the imperial University at Vorbarr Sultana), head of the Scientific Mission to Planet 2 and its system, and spent the next half hour listing significant hints of valuable mineral deposits (both on planet, and in an asteroid belt further sunward than the planet), suggestions for further research efforts, pleas for more personnel on loan from the military, treatments that seemed to have managed to convert some sort of berries into a edible format, and… at which point his growing enthusiasm was briskly curbed by the System Commander's "That's enough Matt, we get your memos. Don't worry, I've passed them on through the _von Humboldt_, and we'll all be glad to see you get more staff and gizmos.

"Colonel Vortimmons? Anything our Ground Commander and resident grouch would like us to know?"

A surprisingly young, and alarmingly fit-looking man, replied, "No strange and eldritch alien menaces we don't already know about; no infiltrators, unless Captain Naismith was kind enough to bring some in with hi-her. And no exercise except training, hauling around things, and perimeter duty for Matt's bughunters. Boring."

Then it was the turn of the District Observer. Cordelia wondered at that. Barrayar was divided up into sixty, non-uniform by any standard she could figure out, Districts. Was this one being declared a new one? Was the balance of their government going to change back on Barrayar? It probably had to, considering the entry they'd made into Nexus affairs, but this was different than just setting up an occupation over Komarr.

The man poured himself his third (or was it his fourth?) glass of wine, and began his report.

"I match your absence of eldritch alien menaces from geometries unknown to Euclid and unfindable by Five Space math, with a terminally tedious lack of a single decent subversive conspiracy to be found. Bitching-" and here, for a second his glance had worriedly shifted to Cordelia… "and moaning by the barrel-full, but mostly just about when they'll get leave back at the vastly overrated fleshpots on the _Vashnoi Kremlin,_ and what they'll do when they get there. Besides blowing six months pay in six days. I'm tempted to set up a small casino on-planet just to show them that their grasp of the odds a pair of dice will come up seven is seriously underdeveloped. Report ends. Vortain out, or he will be when he gets to his brandy stash. Now that I know we're getting resupplied I won't be such a miser to myself with it."

"So in general, Captain Naismith," Vorgustavson picked up the conversational ball, "we have surveyed the system and found four planets, including this one, and a nice mineable asteroid belt. We have a land-mass map of the inhabitable planet down to the one-meter resolution level. We have five months of meteorological data for the local area, and some idea of things on the continental climate side. There has been a rudimentary geological survey of a hundred kilometer radius of this point. No microscopic bio-hazards have turned up yet, and Terran crops will grow in the soil with only moderate processing and supplements. A few native things are edible, so far. And a few things here think we're edible… so far.

"What are your plans? As you aren't part of my command I have no real authority over you, except for security and safety concerns. Now that you've opened the way back home for us, where do you go from here?"

Cordelia put on her best Professor Santos face (a Human Relationships professor working with undergraduates had to project a distinctive image of being enthused about the subject, and totally in control of the young students always on the edge of a snigger attack).

"We're going to wormhole survey the hell out of the System, of course. We're contracted to do that 'to the end of the Sixth Komarr Wormhole string,' and that doesn't end until we either run into a real dead end, or part of the already-surveyed Nexus. The _Norton_'s optimized for that sort of thing, so using accepted search parameters we should be able to do that in sixty standard days or so.

"Then it's back to the barn for a refit. We'll probably dock here for a mid-cruise re-supply of perishables, but… sixty days is a reasonable estimate."

She was impressed; most of those assembled had shifted their line of sight from her chest to her face while she was talking. With this… garrison/survey expedition out of touch for so long, and single gendered in composition, they had been decently hands-off and eyes high. Of course, anyone selected for duty like this was probably head-and-shoulders above the usual military martinet, but even some of her compatriots would have been acting a little odd in the current situation.

She also noticed some flickering glances from some of the party toward others. And a general relaxation of tensed necks and shoulders. That something she'd said had resolved a problem for them was obvious. Why just doing her job was so important was less clear. No doubt, some of Bill's despair at her social antennae's sensitivity was accurate. At least she hadn't had to use a chair to keep the poor sex-starved beasties in their place. That was something.

Vorgustavson wrapped the meeting up, only giving a _small_ startled reaction when he noticed that somehow Illyan had ended up attending the meeting and had passed throughout it unobserved.

XXX

There it was. A lot further out from the local solar mass than usual, but not anything requiring the current orthodoxy on wormhole placements to be rewritten. A sweet and properly-sized uncharted wormhole to… somewhere. Potentially, Primus System (they'd have to get a better name of it; there were at least three other, longer-known, systems in the Nexus with nearly matching names) could be the long sought second route to Earth, or (if the theories were wrong, after all) the first route to another galaxy. In either case, or any other, it was a thumping big mystery that had to be solved, an opportunity to be explored, and a job that had a significant chance of being the last voyage of the _Norton Forerunner_ and all aboard her.

They'd spent ten days doing as thorough a normal-space analysis of every bit of radiation and particle that leaked out of it, or avoided it like a plague. Axiom 23 of the Survey: All data is useful.

She'd spent the last five days of the period having anyone not involved in the survey work itself making sure that there wasn't anything on the _Norton_ that wasn't, in ship terms, triced up twice, battened down to a fare-thee-well, and turned off (or on, as needed), rewired, fueled or drained, and generally put into as safe a condition that still allowed the ship to move and do a wormhole penetration as possible. Even Tommy Newbrecker had been getting regular sleep and exercise for the last few days. Nobody went into an unproven jump without the odd premonition of doom. The first ten (each way) uses of a wormhole, before all the ticks and fluctuations were properly worked out, had a cumulative 16% chance of disaster. All wormhole transit malfunctions were catastrophic. Some wormholes were even safe one direction, but not the other. Systems with multiples had managed that to be figured out, and the statistics of risk to be arrived at. Wormhole explorers usually didn't go to casinos for their entertainment… they played for higher stakes at work.

And now Cordelia Naismith was going through her eighth completely untried hole in flat-space, her third in command of a ship. She knew very well that she was a fugitive from the law of averages; only Tommy of those onboard had gone through more exploring jumps. She really wished she was allowed to show how bloody scared she was. But a Captain had… obligations.

Calmly, Captain Naismith checked her displays; all systems were showing green and ready. She did a quick visual survey of her crew, all seat-belted in with their stations either running, or unpowered, as prescribed by operations procedures. Tommy Newbrecker was doing deep breathing exercises in his chair. The Betans were all trying to project an air of nonchalance that the Barrayarans were trying to imitate.

All except Simon Illyan, his face impassive, were visibly clutching their hands into white-knuckled fists.

"Captain, all plugged in," Tommy said.

Now… the time was now.

"Mr. Newbrecker, the con is yours."

XXX

Not a bad ride, she thought. No worse than a headache and the equivalent of the milder Ksthatryian dinner's worth of upset for her guts. Tommy was even doing a little humming as he turned the con over to the flat-space crew. He wasn't leaving his chair, though. Even he was eager to have the news about what they had found as soon as the data started coming in.

A slightly dirty system, in the astronomical sense. A solar object not much above the Brown Dwarf size, a few dwarf planets (one with an area still glowing from a recent impact), and enough asteroids with masses worth eventually investigating that it was going to take years to reliably plot all of the kilometer and above ones. Essentially worthless in an economic sense, unless there was as kicker in the system somewhere.

It took another two weeks of general survey work to find the potential kicker; another wormhole entrance.

Now all the little stuff had some possible value; raw materials for stations, repair materials, fuel, even vacation spots for the terminally anti-social.

And now also the careful survey began again of the new potential road to anywhere. And in secret, at night, Cordelia thought about the risks she was running, and wondered where they started. One risk had been eliminated; Timoshenko had been off-loaded at Planet 2. She'd even managed to get his sentence for attacking a superior officer downgraded from the life-ruining one that the Barrayaran Military Code of Conduct prescribed. It was the first time she'd ever begged a personal favor for someone she despised.

Most of the Barrayarans she'd seen on this trip had reacted… proportionately. Outside of the Diplomatic Service she was probably by now the leading expert on observing Barrayarans under stress. And of all of them only two, Vorgustavson and Illyan, had been… wrong. If she trusted her own judgment, both of them knew something that the rest, even those working on the _Norton_, didn't.

Especially Illyan. She'd seen him getting off the lander on the planet; normal reactions for a ground hugger had passed over his face. When he'd found out about Timoshenko originally, normal reactions of anger and embarrassment that his people had shown up poorly. Each step, each jump through the increasingly less plotted wormhole string he'd been as non-reacting as if it was a milk-run from Komarr to Pol. As if he knew the jumps were safe.

Even the one that had turned Prince Serg and Ges Vorrutyer into particle puree.

And in secret, in the night, Cordelia began to go over the records that had been uploaded when they were orbiting the Discovery. And she wondered… was it? She examined one after another of the recorded flight paths of all survey trips through the system of what might become the 61st District, and found an absence. A week-long one for a no-longer-on-station ship, the _Vorvayne Plunger_ taking place early in the discovery period for the system. Repeated two months later, and followed a week later by the _Pierre le Sanguinaire _going off the charts for a few days. The part of the system the two ships had been investigating (one with a Prince on it) was disguised (poorly) in the data. It was the 'poorly' part that was important. Barrayaran technology was… acceptable. Barrayaran camouflage, physical or informational, was first class. Why poorly?

Now there was another opportunity to follow the trail to where it all made sense. She had the very strong feeling that Illyan wouldn't be sweating when the next jump came up, and neither would she.

At least about the jump.

XXX

Mild, Cordelia decided; the after-jump effects were no worse than mild. Systems were booting up quickly, and there was the pleasant lack of the smell of vomit in the Bridge air.

Practically at the same time, Vormoncrief (checking for hazards, both physical and radiation) and Phillips (communications) sent their alarms to her screen. Him, lots of radiation sources, none too close; and her, electromagnetic communications of every commercial and official variety. Both sources, checked against the databases, came up with the same answers. The Astrogation sensors confirmed the local star configurations. They'd just discovered a new access point into Escobaran space. Jackpot!

As Cordelia began to mentally compose her first message to Escobar Traffic Control, some part of her mind was pondering a more proximate anomaly; that a new wormhole into a long settled system that should have been properly surveyed long ago. There had been three Barrayarans on the Bridge for the trip. Two had been… properly… scared rigid. One had showed no real distress at a good chance of becoming a spray of elemental particles. Was Illyan really that stoic, or had he known something? Who was she kidding?

XXX

She decided she couldn't complain. This was the first time she'd been the guest of honor at a major media circus. Captain of the ship that had discovered a new route to Komarr Junction; her name was now circling thorough the news media of the Nexus as the daring explorer who had brought half the Nexus into closer communication. Yea for the Betan Astronomical Survey! Yea for the _Norton Forerunner_! And certainly: Yea for Captain Naismith!

Except as she was receiving the awards from learned societies, and attending over-done dinners given by Trade organizations, it all felt a little hollow. She tried to get more of the various honors and presentations directed toward the crew, especially the Barrayarans, but except for many a free drink in the cafés and bars of transfer stations, not a lot of love was being wasted on the small fry. One name to celebrate seemed as much as the mass audience could remember. Yea for Naismith!

While the captain and crew of the _Norton Forerunner_ was being kept occupied with ceremony and maintenance, the new entrance to Escobar space was being meticulously examined and analyzed by the aroused staff of every learned institution on the planet that had the slightest claim to being involved in extra-atmospheric affairs. This was the biggest news event in half a life-time, and _everyone_ wanted to get in to the act, get to talk on the news channels, and apply for new and urgent grants.

In the event, the return voyage was almost anti-climatic for Cordelia; she was certain it had been done safely at least one time before. Not a dead-certain voyage, but not the first voyage in that direction. She was without doubt about that. Why it was the first known transit through that wormhole… that eluded her.

Author's Note:

Any mistakes on numbers of jumps via wormhole, or on travel times are solely mine, and not the fault of Tel's meticulous research.


End file.
